THE WORLD IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND...
Looks like Palm, excuse me, PalmOne, looked deep into its corporate soul and discovered it really wanted to be a 
purveyor of mobile information products after all, the success of the Treo smart phone/PDA notwithstanding. It announced its entry, or re-entry, depending on how you look at it, into the market for "mobile managers" today.
PC Magazine, in a story this morning, says that the product, likely called LifeDrive, is expected to be officially announced on May 18th. The picture (click image for larger picture) of the product, along with its existence, was inadvertently published early on Amazon, and is available here as long they decide to leave it there.
PalmOne apparently came to this conclusion after "studying customer trends", realizing that
"some people want to carry dozens of documents and hundreds of songs while others want to carry a thousand-plus photos and enjoy videos," said Page Murray, palmOne vice president of marketing. "Organization functions were highly valued by nearly all our customers, but some wanted much more business and personal file-management capabilities. We listened and will deliver a new category of mobile-computing product that will let customers fuse their own mix of personal and business content in ways never before possible in either handheld computers or smartphones."
So even though PalmOne thinks they're providing a unique product in a brand new market, it joins the crowded field of similar devices from companies like Archos, Creative, and others. Even Apple, with it's iPod Photo can pinch hit on "mobile information" duties if needed.
The key attractive feature in this new product, already implemented on the company's Tungsten devices, is the ability to be seamlessly seen as an external hard drive on a Windows or a Mac, with its convenient Flash USB storage.
The reason this new category of products is being defined is the same that enabled the first iPod to be a reality. Small, teeny, but increasingly large and fast hard drive storage systems, from companies like Toshiba. They started at 10 and 20 Gigabytes, currently at 60 GB in iPods and similar devices, and on their way to 80 and 100 Gigabytes in a few months.
At that size, they overshadow the hard drives of almost all the Windows and Mac laptops in the world today. Then the possibilities start to get really interesting.
It means devices in sizes ranging from a paperback to a cigarette pack (remember those?) have enough storage and display to act like a laptop in a pinch. This gets interesting, especially if either Microsoft and/or Apple can get their desktop operating systems to run on them.
And they're beginning to...there is an emergent category of computers called handtop PCs (discussed in an earlier post on this site titled "ON MOBILE VS. PC WEB", May 26, 
2005), that is already starting to move in this direction. In some ways, although the box is bigger, Apple's Mac Mini, is also a step in this direction. This device has been generally well-received, and is a harbinger of PCs small and inexpensive enough to do a number of specialized tasks around the house, office and on the road.
In fact, Steve Jobs' description of the Mac Mini as a "Bring your own Display, Keyboard, and Mouse", aka BYODKM, has sparked its own thriving community of Mac and Windows enthusiasts. Microsoft may also be moving in this direction, with its next generation game machine, the XBOX 360 likely putting in double duty as a media center that could also be used in lower cost, application specific ways, according to a recent Bill Gates interview with Engadget.com.
In BYODKM is a clue on a major direction that computing is moving towards, and the OS companies like Microsoft, and Apple are likely already focused on. Given the explosion of digital applications like photos, video, music, games (online and off), and textual blogs, along with the popularity of home wireless networks, users are seeing a growing fragmentation in where their core applications and data are stored at any time and where it might be needed on a moment's notice.
Indeed, with companies like Google, with GMail, making eventually unlimited storage available on line, the world opens to a whole new way of computing on the go.
Currently the burden of remembering what is stored and where, and the effort of getting it to another location that it's needed, consumes increasing amount of user cycles. Ideally, it should just consume software and processing cycles, where "the system" figure out where something is, and needs to go.
Systems like Sonos that I've talked about on this site, are already starting to do that with elegant, but proprietary, and data-type specific applications like music in multiple zones around the home.
Now imagine a Lifedrive or iPod sized device, with a 100GB hard drive...call it the LifePC, for now...it has full and expandable wired and wireless connectivity capability, which includes Ethernet, fire wire, usb 2.0, along with Wi-fi, bluetooth, Wimax, EV-DO AND GSM/CDMA (to connect to cell networks if needed), a built-in keyboard a la the Treo or the Blackberry, and a small TFT color screen. The keyboard and the screen are to be used in a pinch, but the device is really designed as an "on-the-fly" BYODKM machine. Let me explain...
The software driving the system is smart enough to know how to seamlessly switch networks depending on what it's on board GPS chip gives as the device's location.
It always carries its user's core set of applications and data. Now whenever the user, say comes home, and wants to access the application and data on a more powerful desktop PC, and use the big plasma or LCD monitor as the main display, the system connects to those devices, preferably wireless, but with wires and/or a dock if needed.
At this point, the system needs to be smart enough to on the fly allow the apps and software to be run on the more powerful desktop system, including using its graphics card and audio hookups. That is to say, the LifePC becomes an executable, external storage device that shows up in the Windows Explorer or Finder (Mac) of the desktop and runs on like it's the desktop. You're able to use all the peripherals, keyboard, mouse, web cams, etc., already attached to the desktop PC. Presumably, this could also be done with open-source Linux set-ups.
When you're ready to leave, you press a button or an icon, and all the data is automatically and rapidly moved or synchronized (depending on the user's preference) to the LifePC, and you're ready to go. The LifePC could similarly be used in someone else's office or home network, or at an internet cafe, where you'd have your computing environment with you at all times. Of course, the device is always backing up all your apps and data to a server network on the Internet (maybe an infinite storage Google network?) at all times.
Sharp, of Japan, offered an ultra-notebook in Japan until recently that doubled as an external hard drive via the USB 2.0 connection, but was severely limited by the existing realities of Windows XP and some Sharp design decisions.
The Mac already gives a glimpse of this capability. When you buy a new Mac or notebook, it offers you the ability to do a full, automatic transfer to the new machine, including your applications.
This is the key, because moving entire apps from one hard drive to another without re-installing from scratch, is one of the more difficult things to do, especially in the Windows environment. Windows does not offer an out of the box transfer mechanism like the Mac, and there's no indication that I'm aware of that the next version Longhorn will make this possible.
Today, switching from an old Windows PC or a laptop to a new one means that you need to scratch out a day of your life to transfer all the stuff, especially since you have to scrounge for all the various applications disks to re-install.
It's one of the most inefficient way to do things in a world where applications, data, content are changing from static, to constantly changing, and shared activities.
The cell phone industry is well-aware of this new opportunity, and is salivating at the revenue possibilities. They're aware that the cell phone has a chance to become the only primary PC that the user needs, and always takes along. But unless they decide to play in an open way, where the devices are truly able to switch networks on the fly, and without additional costs/tariffs, they'll simply remain the barren walled gardens of today. And the cell carriers are not inclined to cannibalize their current or future network revenues any time soon.
I may have to eat my words, but I don't think the mainstream market will adopt the notion of a combined cell phone and mobile PC. Key reasons here are battery life, screen and keyboard, in that order. The power draw for the theoretical LifePC are problematic in a cellphone that needs to be always on and available 24/7. Size becomes bulky, not to mention the heat issues. For that reason, even though there will be a plethora of "converged" devices, I believe the market will go back to separating cell phones from the LifePC.
The wrinkle here is that in about five years, the notion of needing a cell phone may go away. The phone itself, wired or wireless, is rapidly just becoming an application on a PC and/or laptop, or any other imaginable device in the future, thanks to companies like Skype and others.
Once wireless networks like Wimax, championed by Intel and others, are rolled 
out and are able to handle mobile devices, internet telephony, or VOIP becomes a greater reality for mobile communications. The cell phone would then morph into a VOIP phone, which can be embedded in the LifePC, accessible by bluetooth headsets, or a small VOIP, stylish Motorola RAZR phone of the future becomes a real possibility. Motorola is already working with sun glass manufacturer Oakley to bring miniature cellphones into sunglasses.
So, the opportunity falls back into the hands of the PC industry, broadly and globally defined as the horizontal, open mishmash of hardware, software, and network standards that will make the LifePC a reality.
Until then, all of these gizmos like the Palm mobile manager, the mini, and today's computers and laptops, are but stepping stones to devices that move and change with the user, flexibly, easily, seamlessly, and on the fly. Then the user truly will have the world and their life, in the palm of his/her hands.
It seems like this is Google's ultimate trump card over MSFT. But instead of so much power at the edge of the network, put it all in the middle and dumb down the device. (It's like Larry Ellison all over again.) However, it does appear that many of the pieces to realize this vision are falling into place. But what is most difficult to assess is which is going to be cheaper and more functional for the consumer. Very cheap thin clients with very fat pipes or powerful clients with medium pipes and lots of processing power. It's a tough call.
Posted by: Alex Rowland | Tuesday, May 10, 2005 at 06:34 PM